Wolf looks for new clothes
International Viewpoint #259 September 1994
GUIDO CALDIRON has been active at an anti-fascist documentation centre since 1990, mainly concerned with the question of the far right but also with the question of social exclusion, particularly in the poor urban neighbourhoods. He is a journalist with Il Manifesto, the independent communist daily newspaper, published since the early 1970s. International Viewpoint spoke with him in July.
AN YOU describe the
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work of the of antifascist documentation centre in Rome?
The centre was set up by militants emerging from different experiences in the social and associative movements, like the women's collectives who work around the question of immigrant women, the "redskins" who work largely around music and the question of "image" in the anti-fascist struggle, and some traditional political militants who come from different organisational experiences. We have chosen to come together to work on racism and fascism, with the appearance in Italy of racist politics linked above all to the rise of the extreme right.
Can you explain the spectacular rise of the far right in
Italy?
To reply to this question, it is necessary to go back a bit, because the electoral victory of the far right was prepared by a social climate which goes back to the early 1980s in Italy.
During these years the political situation was not determined by the forces of the right or extreme right, but above all by what was called in Italy the "CAF" - which are the initials of the three principal political personalities of the Socialist Party and Christian Democracy. The 1980s were the years of Bettino Craxi (and Andreotti and Forlani), who monopolised power inside the
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Socialist Party through some very populist means, using authoritarian methods inside the party. Craxi was able to change completely the image of the Italian Socialist Party which became a very much more centrist and above all fiercely anti-Communist party, basing its politics on the rejection of any trade union heritage and all the conquests of the workers' movement during the 1970s.
The Craxi years had bad consequences for the workers' movement, and challenged traditional class solidarity as well as the gains of social combat during the 1970s, like the organisation of work, the system of trade union representation and the power of workers in their workplaces.
A cultural and media offensive was launched with the objective of renovating the image of imperialist Italy, a country which was now part of the circle of "the great of the earth". During this period we also saw debates on the installation of Cruise missiles in the context of the integration of Italy into NATO. It was during this same period that the renovation of the Italian military apparatus was embarked upon. This policy was carried out in a nationalist framework, and episodes like the holding of the World Cup in Italy in 1990 were part of it.
These things prepared the electoral successes of the far right and the right wing coalition with the other different formations, because everything changed in the political climate. The different corruption scandals and the "clean hands" operation discredited the whole of the traditional political class. There was no longer the possibility of advancing the traditional responses of the workers' moment and the parties of the left because the 1980s had hit very hard. During these years the Italian Communist Party (PCI) were in opposition, but in several northern towns and even in Rome the PCI had participated in local government with the Socialist party (PSI of Craxi. The trade union leadership gave its support to the Socialists. They tried to freeze social conflicts, holding back the workers and the radical movement which existed in the factories, and this prepared the electoral victory of the right. The "clean hands" enquiry discredited the whole of the political class, not just Christian Democracy (which did not constitute simply a political party but a system of management of power), but also the Socialist Party, and at the level of the local administrations in the towns some elected representatives of the PCI have been mixed up in the same affairs as the Christian Democrat mafiosi. Thus nobody had clean hands on the political scene. It is easy at this moment for the far right and the MSI, which has never or almost never held power, to have a clean image, while the Northern League began to develop in the north of Italy, the "industrial triangle" where the economic crisis hit hardest.
The League developed from the mid-1980s onwards and it was something which gave a political representation to the new social situations which emerged on the basis of the ruin of the old industrial towns of northern Italy. The third and largest component of the coalition which won the elections was Berlusconi, who was perhaps the least new force because he had been close to the Socialist Party in Milan. Before that he had been very close to the fascists in the 1970s, when he had helped finance Il Secolo di Italia, then the daily of the MSI. He made his fortune through some very specific laws favouring his communications empire, while the Milan local administration, which was in the hands of the socialists, helped him acquire cheap land for the purchase of new buildings. Thus he began his career with the construction of new towns like Milan Il and Milan Ill, which are the big residential centres in the suburbs of Milan. Berlusconi was very much part of this rotten political class, but he has undoubtedly given a new image to it, the image of a "golden boy" won in the 1980s, which still excites the imagination of many Italians.
Is the MS/ a fascist formation?
This is a question which has generated a lot of debate, as has the overall characterisation of the coalition which was victorious at the general elections. If one wishes to give an image of the whole of the governmental coalition one could say that it is very clearly on the
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International Viewpoint #259 September 1994 extreme right. On the social questions and the organisation of society, they are against abortion; they have positions very close to those of the Pope and the Vatican hierarchy. Then one could make some big differentiations, because the right has three faces.
With the League one has the invention of a community which does not exist; there is no language or anything in the north of Italy to form the basis of this community, it is something linked to questions of money. The ethnic question serves to conceal social egoism.
The northern regions hardest hit by the economic crisis were once the great regions of worker solidarity. Now individualism and regionalism have replaced that tradition. The process is linked to Italian history: the workers of the south became immigrants to make the fortunes of Agnelli and the big owners of the car factories in the north of Italy; this became part of the social body, and a kind of racism was born. The League invokes an ideal community which never existed in reality because for example the immigrants who worked in Turin for 20 years now could vote for Fini followed a racist and xenophobic orientation... the League and feel themselves to be Torinos, but they speak the Torino dialect with a strong Sicilian accent. It represents the defeat of integration. Integration for these people is only realised in the factory, after the factory there is no more integration. Thus they defend things which are not theirs. Thus the ethnicist regionalist far right has a somewhat particular face.
The MSI party — the Italian Social Movement — is the direct inheritor of the last incarnation of the fascist regime in Italy, namely the Italian Social Republic established around the Lake of Garde in the north of Italy under the protection of the German army. It was the "toughest" version of Italian fascism, which came closest to the features of Nazi Germany. After the war the veterans of the Italian Social Republic like Almirante, who was in charge of propaganda and had been responsible for the shooting of partisans, founded this party, whose aim was to take up the flame of those who died to defend the ideal of the Italian Social Republic. There was a long debate on the banning of the party because it rejected the constitution, but it 12 was never dissolved and was utilised several times by Christian Democracy to support the government from outside. It was, above all, used in some towns to guarantee the corrupt mafia dealings of Christian Democracy.
Some MSI leaders were rehabilitated by Christian Democracy in the 1950s and became leaders of the party; inside the MSI there are deputies of different currents, for example, in latter years the young secretary of the party, Fini, who made his career as the leader of neo-fascist youth, has sought to give the party a new image, inspired by the success of Le Pen in France. Fini followed a racist and xenophobic orientation, but this only bore fruit when the Christian Democracy began to founder because of the corruption scandals. There was in some towns only one party which was capable of taking up its heritage and this was the MSI. For example, in Rome the MSI completely absorbed the heritage of Christian Democracy, including those mafia elements who had previously collected votes for the Christian Democrats. Thus Fini came second in the elections at Rome but gained nearly half of the votes and so the MSI became the first party in Rome. Also, in Naples they had a very good score with Alessandra Mussolini, and success in other towns, since the Berlusconi movement had not yet emerged. The internal opposition is represented by Pino Rauti who is a former leader of the radical right New Order and was recently re-elected to the European parliament. He is going to represent the social soul of this party — socially the MSI represents the middle managers of the public sector and thus the idea of drastically pruning this sector is not a good thing for the MSI electorate. Thus it is possible to envisage a crisis inside the government in the coming months, because the MSI represents people who would be very hard hit by a radical liberalism.
Then there is Berlusconi, who represents the Latin American populist formula mixed with US style media razzmatazz, but also with aspects of a banana republic, because he made his fortune with a football team and has imported the language of football into politics, and also has had as candidates football players, TV journalists and so on. He is very much to the far right but with more acceptable positions, but behind him in the Cabinet there are people who have worked since the beginning in Forza Italia, including veterans of the MSI like the minister of foreign affairs, who comes from the MSI section in Rome and says that he has the same anti-Communist culture as Fini.
What happened during the last European elections?
The League understood that its electorate, which comes in part from those disappointed by the left and the former Christian Democracy, liked the look of Forza Italia, above all in that, although it was successful throughout Italy, it had a "northern" image; they were linked to Milan football team while Berlusconi is someone linked to the Milan bourgeoisie. With this new government the true centre of Italy is no longer Rome but Milan. This is something which has pleased the regionalist and racist electorate of the League and they thus lost nearly 2 million votes in total to Forza Italia. There was a great media campaign in the press and television by Berlusconi against the League, because they had said that Berlusconi was OK but needed controlling, was a businessman rather than a politician, and that while they wanted to change everything Berlusconi did not. There was a TV programme where the interviewer spoke to youth in the street who were by coincidence very favourable to Berlusconi, and every evening there was someone who said "I was with the League but now I support Berlusconi because Bossi has betrayed". The same thing happened with the MSI, who lost 1.5 million votes but is still nearly the first party in Rome and in most of southern Italy. It is already the first party of the Italian community in Bolzaro where there is the question of the Tyrolian community, and is very strong in Trieste. The MSI is in many ways the strongest constituent of the coalition because it is the sole party implanted socially at a rank-and-file level.
Before the electoral successes of the far right we believed, notably after the 2 October 1992 street battles between trade unions and police, that something new was going to emerge in Italy, that the radical champions of self-organisation (the trade union left, in local neighbourhoods, youth movements, and universities) were gradually going to turn the tide against the revisionist leadership in the CP and the unions.
On 2 October 1992 the trade unions came on to the streets and confronted the police for the first time since 1977. We
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